Gas Line Repair in Potomac, MD
In Potomac, 68% of homes are on mains gas. Every one of them has a service line under the ground between the street and the meter, and part of it belongs to somebody else.
Read this first
A buried service line and a meter sit on most properties in Potomac, where 68% of homes are on mains gas. Federal rules end the utility's service line at the meter outlet, so everything downstream of the meter is the owner's to maintain and repair.
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey table B25040; the service line boundary is 49 CFR § 192.3.
If you smell gas right now
Leave the building on foot. Do not use a phone or a light switch inside. Call 911 and your gas utility from somewhere else, and do not call us — we are a referral service, not an emergency line. The full list, in order.
How Potomac is supplied
The meter is doing two jobs: measuring gas, and marking where the federally regulated line stops. The second is the one that matters when something fails.
Buried customer piping past the meter — out to a garage, a grill, a generator — is the owner’s, and it is easy to forget it exists until somebody digs.
| Households in Potomac | Share |
|---|---|
| Utility (mains) gas | 68% |
| Bottled or tank propane | 2% |
| Electricity | 24% |
| Fuel oil and kerosene | 5% |
| Wood and everything else | 2% |
Source: US Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, table B25040 (house heating fuel), 2023 release. Universe: 16,542 occupied housing units. B25040 records what heats the house, which is the best available guide to whether a property has mains gas or a tank — it does not count service lines directly. Service line definition: 49 CFR § 192.3, via PHMSA interpretation PI-12-0003.
Across Maryland as a whole, 45% of households are on mains gas and 3% on tank propane. Potomac sits 22 points above the state on mains and 1 point below it on propane. The state number would tell you something true about the state and very little about here, which is why it is not the number above.
Before anyone digs on the property
One free call before any excavation. PHMSA is blunt about why: excavation damage is the leading cause of pipeline incidents, and 8-1-1 raises the odds of avoiding one to 99 in 100. It applies to a fence post as much as a foundation.
Source: PHMSA, 811 Day.
What to ask whoever quotes it
Ask which side of the meter the work is on before anything else. On the utility side it may not be a contractor job at all, and a quote that has not established that has not established whose problem it is.
Other Maryland towns we route in
- Union Bridge 1% mains gas · 7% tank propane
- Sparks Glencoe 19% mains gas · 5% tank propane
- Woodbine 6% mains gas · 12% tank propane
- Galena 1% mains gas · 25% tank propane
- Elkton 29% mains gas · 17% tank propane
Checking a plumber in Maryland
Maryland licenses are issued by the Maryland State Board of Plumbing, Department of Labor, which publishes a public search you can use before work begins.
Gas work is separately permitted and separately licensed in most jurisdictions, so ask specifically about gas rather than plumbing in general.
For repair work, not for a suspected leak.If you can smell gas, leave and call 911 or your utility from outside; this is the wrong number for that. For everything else — a line, a meter, an appliance connection — we will route you to a contractor covering your area, free of charge to you. Any Potomac job, gas or otherwise, is routed from here.
Call (888) 752-8038